Source: Telegraph
Leeds United rejected £1.8m Newcastle bid for Jermaine Beckford
Bates' club stood firm even though Beckford will be able to leave Elland Road for nothing this summer and the player had handed in a transfer request to force through a move to the Championship leaders. [LNB]Despite the tempting offer, the former Chelsea chairman left the final decision over Beckford to Leeds manager Simon Grayson, whose stubborn stance was vindicated when the player withdrew his transfer request and then scored twice in the 2-2 draw at Tottenham. [LNB]Leeds Uniteds Jermaine Beckford seems destined for bigger things"I have always said the Beckford decision was down to Simon Grayson," Bates said. [LNB]"We could have picked up a quick £1.8 million cash from Newcastle for Beckford's transfer and Becks wanted to go. [LNB]"But Simon has always said he would do what was best for Leeds United and that means getting promotion, which is what we are doing. [LNB]"I am not particularly impressed with his (Beckford's) agent but as long as Jermaine stays on the pitch and scores goals I think all the fans will be happy and that is the important thing - the fans being happy in the short and long term." [LNB]Leeds United will return to League One action on Tuesday night at play-off contenders Swindon, having lost pole position in the promotion race to Norwich, but Bates is confident that Grayson will get things back on track. [LNB]"Simon will always be keeping people's feet on the ground," Bates added. "He said 'chairman, it is great at the moment but there will be a dip' and since Manchester United we have dropped five points out of six in the league and we got the Carlisle result (a 2-1 defeat in the Johnstone's Paint Trophy) [LNB]"We are being hampered because just when we thought at the beginning of December that we had all our players coming back from injury they started picjking up knocks and niggles again and this is the inevitable consequence of playing so many games. [LNB]"By the time we have played Colchester that will be seven matches already this year on terrible pitches which are not conducive to good football [LNB]"But if we want to win promotion we have 19 games to go which is 57 points t go for at stake we will have all kinds of weather conditions and all kinds of pitch conditions between mow and May. [LNB]"Hopefully we will look back in May and think we did it anyway so ;let's not get too disheartened because we have had a dip - every club has dip." [LNB]
